Recently, a need for a wireless sensor network system requiring high reliability and low latency in industrial applications is increasing. To satisfy such a demand, the wireless sensor network system has the following characteristics.
First, issues of channel interference and collision should be resolved by using a multichannel, instead of a conventional single channel, thereby improving reliability.
Further, a delay time should be ensured or minimized using a time division channel access method instead of a competition-based channel access mechanism so as to resolve a delay in data transmission time between endpoint nodes.
In addition, the system should have a long network life of several years, or over ten years, without a need for battery replacement of a monitoring application service having a long data sampling cycle, such as a smart grid or a smart utility.
However, the IEEE802.15.4e Deterministic and Synchronous Multichannel Extension Media Access Control (DSME MAC) protocol, introduced previously in a wireless sensor network as an MAC protocol having reliability and low latency, has limitations in supporting a long data generation cycle and difficulties in adaptively dealing with an application service having different data generation cycles and involves redundant power consumption due to separate procedures for network association and time slot allocation. Thus, a demand exists for solutions to these issues.